


y cadáveres duermen

by dweeblet



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon, Sad Ending, Short One Shot, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 22:34:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13913562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweeblet/pseuds/dweeblet
Summary: Please retry.Please retry.Please retry.





	y cadáveres duermen

_ CRITICAL FAILURE _

_ Error EXT_READCTX570: Cortex Chip corrupted. _

_ Please retry. _

 

He is alone. The terminal is dark, screen shattered and all light gone, and Simon is alone. He will never get used to calling them optics but they whirr as the mechanisms in his helmet work to swivel them from side to side; nothing but black, plankton and debris floating lazily towards the abyss above. The emergency alarm still howls distantly. Bubbles drift aimlessly upwards.

 

_ Please retry. _

_ Please retry. _

_ Please retry. _

 

Simon is alone, on the bottom of the ocean, and it hurts.

 

Catherine is gone, but the omnitool is still docked at the ruined terminal, sparking inches from his glove. The tool is a bust, the screen dangling from frayed wires, but her cortex chip is still there and whole, and desperate hope swells in Simon’s borrowed chest.

 

The warden unit is dead, but there is still structure gel everywhere. Structure gel can fix anything, at least Simon thinks so. He could take the omnitool and Catherine’s consciousness with it, stumble with her back to someplace with the right tools, slap on enough gel- it had constructed his current body, unwieldy as it is. 

 

Site Phi, where he sits presently, is outfitted more for larger machines. Simon would need to backtrack. His thoughts turn to the first terminal he’d encountered, in the tech depot back in Upsilon, but he quickly discards the consideration. It is much too far, and too dangerous; even with the warden unit out of commission, the horrors of its proxies surely still wander the corridors. If it was hard enough while whole and lithe to evade those monsters, Simon certainly can’t do so now, missing a great chunk of his left forearm and trapped in an unwieldy power-suited corpse as his vessel.

 

Omicron is closer, and as much as it pains him to be reminded of it, Simon knows that his own body is waiting at Omicron, slumped in a pilot seat and waiting to be recharged and inhabited once more.

 

He staggers to his feet in the darkness mapping a route to the plateau in his mind. Phi is a cleaner site, mostly clear of the warden unit’s presence, but anxiety fills his chest like tar. He remembers the screaming girl and the monster constructs, their howls.

 

Simon’s voice-box synthesises a harsh, barking laugh. He is one of those things, he supposes. An unnatural amalgamation of twisted metal and stolen bones, welded together with biomechanical spittle and clay like Sumerian men. A crime against nature. A monster.

 

He doesn’t want to be like them. Will he? Will he wander the ocean floor, pinprick red eyes in the dark, doomed to haunt the shadows just like the filthy failed experiments he’s grown to fear and pity?

 

Simon doesn’t want that.

 

But Catherine is gone because of his rage, his thoughtless, ignorant words. He pushed her too far, drove her to the edge. It is his fault. He overexerted her. It is his fault that her crucial systems failed. 

 

At this point, Simon Jarrett is good at being a monster.

 

So he shambles like one over the catwalk, peering over the guardrail. The metal creaks in protest against his weight, and Simon idly wonders if the fall from here might be just enough to kill him.

 

He knows it won’t be.

 

Simon turns away from the rail and moves on, heavy boots sending metallic thuds to echo tinnily off the walls, sounds muffled by the water. This body is less mechanized than his first one, but he can feel the tendrils of structure gel that have woven their way through the pockets of Raleigh Herbert’s lungs in this borrowed body of his. 

 

The biotool that has infiltrated his system is poisonous to anything else on this god-forsaken station, and it animates his corpse, pumps stale, venomous air in and out of decaying lungs. He doesn’t need to breathe, really, but the feeling of doing so is a comfort, so he doesn’t stop, either.

 

He clunks over the catwalk, peering down into the darkness. Watery light flickers from the yellow button aside the automatic door, sparking and tired after the launch of the ARK. Simon wanders the dark metal halls for some time, pawing through old storage containers and the leaking remains of unfortunate mockingbirds that litter the floor and metal guards in search of a functioning omnitool. Without one, he can’t swipe past the security system and pass through the series of airlocks that block his path.

 

He sits on the ground by the console where Catherine died and does not move. It is dark, so, so dark. Simon is  _ so, so _ alone in it. The howling of the alarm goes quiet. The station no longer settles around him. All the dripping has stopped. The lights go out, one by one.

 

What’s a robot to do more than sleep?


End file.
